Matthew Casey: The reality of multitasking

We now spend our days writing memos, taking telephone calls and sending e-mails — all at the same time. Many take pride in their hectic lifestyles and firmly believe their technological juggling act makes them more productive.

By Matthew Casey

Rockford Register Star

By Matthew Casey

Posted Jan. 28, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jan 28, 2011 at 9:22 PM

By Matthew Casey

Posted Jan. 28, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jan 28, 2011 at 9:22 PM

This is the second part of an occasional series on the effect of technology on society.

Modern technology was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, we find ourselves immersed in a sea of smartphones, PDAs, laptops and iPads. To satisfy the increasing demands for our time, we invented a solution: multitasking.

We now spend our days writing memos, taking telephone calls and sending e-mails — all at the same time. Many take pride in their hectic lifestyles and firmly believe their technological juggling act makes them more productive.

However, though multitaskers may work on many things at once, research has shown that they don’t do any of them particularly well.

The term “multitasking” was originally coined to describe a computer’s ability to complete several simultaneous functions. Humans may have invented computers, but that doesn’t mean we can compete with them.

Though most of us can successfully walk and chew gum, planning an annual budget while reading the sports page, participating in a conference call and writing a text message isn’t really feasible.

Business coach and author Dave Crenshaw illustrates this point by drawing a distinction between what he calls “background tasking” and “switchtasking.”

An example of background tasking would be listening to music while cleaning; there is no real challenge to your thought process. Switchtasking, however, requires you to refocus your attention between two or more tasks that require significant cognitive function.

Neuropsychiatrist Richard Restak claims that humans are literally incapable of high-level multitasking. Confirming the concept of switchtasking, Restak found that instead of doing multiple things simultaneously, we rapidly switch from one task to the next, forcing our brains to constantly refocus.

Because multitasking prevents the brain from fully concentrating on any particular task, we become distracted and our performance suffers. Multitaskers take longer to complete their work and perform it less competently than if they had tackled each task sequentially.

In other words, multitasking makes our work slow and sloppy. The ramifications are significant:

· A study at the University of California-Irvine found that workers took an average of 25 minutes to recover their focus after being interrupted by telephone calls and e-mails.

· People who use cell phones while driving are four times more likely to crash than those who do not. Reaction time among drivers using cell phones is similar to drivers who are legally drunk.

· A 2005 study by Hewlett-Packard found that workers who were continually distracted by e-mail and phone calls showed an effective drop in IQ equal to twice that of those using marijuana.

· The drop in workplace productivity for multitaskers is as high as 40 percent and costs the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

If people perform worse when multitasking, why do they persist in doing it? It may be that many have deluded themselves into thinking that they’re actually good at it. The continuous stream of distractions created by multitaskers provides the illusion of being busier than they really are –– because they feel busy, they tend view themselves as productive.

Page 2 of 2 - However, Clifford Nass, a psychology professor at Stanford, has found that those who believe they are the best at multitasking unfailingly perform below the level of any other subjects tested. Nass found self-described multitaskers were even worse at multitasking than those who typically don’t engage in the practice.

Eventually, a negative feedback loop may be established: because multitaskers accomplish less, they assume that they need to multitask even more to compensate, thereby compounding the problem. And thanks to the complexities of biochemistry, compulsive multitasking bears more than a passing resemblance to addictive behavior.

During the course of human evolution, our ancestors faced a variety of serious threats. Those who paid attention to seemingly minor events had an advantage in terms of self-preservation. As a result, our brains retain a primitive impulse to respond immediately to stimuli, regardless of its origin. When prompted, our bodies release the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, as well as dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with behavioral rewards.

Though modernity has eliminated many of the threats we once faced, we still react with a Pavlovian response to every beep and buzz that emanates from our various technological devices. The more we do, the more distracted — and stimulated — we become.

Quiet reflection and solitude soon become unattractive alternatives to being perpetually wired. Don’t believe it? Take a cell phone away from a typical teenager and watch as the craving builds for their next electronic fix.

It would be impractical to respond to the problems associated with multitasking by giving up the advantages provided by modern technology. We simply need to learn to control our technology instead of letting it control us.

If you think you’re too busy to cut back, try a simple experiment: shut everything off for a day. You may be surprised to find how much time you actually have.